Once upon a time in a kingdom by the sea there was a king that was fond of fishing. One day he wanted to go fishing, so he asked the royal weather forecaster for the weather forecast for the next few hours.

The highly esteemed royal weather forecaster looked at his forecast models, developed at great expense and verified by 97% of all climate scientists. He

assured the King there was zero percent probability of rain.

So the king and the queen went fishing. On the way they met a man with a fishing pole riding on a donkey, and he asked the man if the fish were biting.

The fisherman said, “Your Majesty, you should return to the palace!
In just a short time I expect a huge rain storm.”

The king replied: “I have invested a large portion of the science budget of my kingdom in climate science and my royal weather forecaster assured me there is no chance of rain. I believe in science and trust him.”

So the king and queen continued on their way.

However, a short time later a torrential rain fell from the sky. The king and queen got thoroughly soaked.

Furious, they returned to the palace and the king gave the order to fire the meteorologist.

Then he summoned the fisherman and offered him the prestigious position of royal weather forecaster.

The fisherman said, “Your Majesty, I do not know anything about weather forecasting. The donkey told me.”

The King replied: “The donkey is a dumb animal and cannot speak.”

“True,” said the fisherman, “but, if his ears droop, it means with certainty that it will rain.”

So the king hired the donkey.

And thus began the practice of hiring dumb asses to work in influential positions of government. The practice is unbroken to this date, and thus the democrat party symbol was born.

(Is it a true story? Not really. It is making its rounds. This is how the dumb asses party symbol got started.)

At the climate conference in Bonn, Germany, Syria signed the so called Paris Accord on Climate Change, leaving the United States alone as a non-signer.

Our European friends are quite upset about this. After all, countries like Denmark and Germany have the highest residential electricity rates in the world to pay for their wind and solar power installed. Here are the countries with reduced CO2 emissions this century:

But if one looks at the absolute decline in CO2 emissions, the U.S. leads the pack hands down:

So, who is the biggest CO2 villain? It is China by 6500 million tons of oil equivalent increase since 2000. According to the Paris accord China is allowed to emit 6 times as much CO2 as the U.S. And not only that, the U.S. would pay them as one of the “developing” countries to do that!

Sixty years ago I worked as a plate scrubber and errand boy in a Swedish bakery. In one corner of the bakery stood the oven, a giant cement and stone contraption weighing at least 50 tons. It was run on electricity, turning on every night at 10 P.M. and turning itself off at 5 A.M. First in the morning we baked the Danishes and other good stuff that required the highest heat, and as the day wore on and the oven cooled off, other breads were baked in the order of temperature need. It took some planning, but the price difference between night rates and day rates made it all worthwhile.

This brings me to a truly smart electricity meter.

It would charge the customer at the current cost of generation + transmission cost + utility profit, displaying the current cost at any given time of the day.

The customer would have the right to sell back electricity to the net at the current cost of generation – transmission cost – utility profit.

Knowing the current true price of energy the customer can then delay turning on the clothes dryer until the price goes below an acceptable level. He could take a look at the current price and decide to turn off the air conditioner rather than pay $1.20 per KW, or she could decide: It is worth it.

By making the user rather than the power company decide how and when electricity is used and produced this will bring immense benefits:

Many users will decide to buy a backup generator with battery, charge the battery when the price is low, and discharge the battery when the price is high. If there is excess battery capacity, he can even sell back the excess at the inflated price. And if the price is high enough it is cheaper to use the generator.

This will have immense benefits on the grid, lessening peak demand and increasing the off peak use.

And best of all, should the grid fail, there will be enough generating capacity to run the refrigerators and essential stuff until power is restored.

What prevents this from being realized?

Politicians and the power companies desire to maintain total control over how the net is used. Political regulators hate to give decision making power back to the people.

A new study evaluating models of future climate scenarios has led to the creation of the new risk categories “catastrophic” and “unknown” to characterize the range of threats posed by rapid global warming. Researchers propose that unknown risks imply existential threats to the survival of humanity.

Well Under 2 Degrees Celsius:

Fast Action Policies to Protect People and the Planet from Extreme Climate Change

Report of the Committee to Prevent Extreme Climate Change

Chairs:

V. Ramanathan, M. L. Molina, and D. Zaelke

Published September, 2017

Prominently and up front is a diagram that is supposed to explain everything:

From the free encyclopedia: The term is usually used within the law enforcement world, where they are officially known as confidential or criminal informants (CI), and can often refer pejoratively to the supply of information without the consent of the other parties with the intent of malicious, personal or financial gain.